The article conveys the deal is dumb because Adobe has no free tier, leaving a huge barn door sized gap open and vulnerable for the future.
Future freemium competition springing up isn't solved by this one remarkably expensive deal (which suggests Adobe is desperate, and a whole other topic). In another year or other relatively short amount of time, Adobe will need to keep executing and succeeding in acquisitions of freemium competitors who can spring up with weed-like ease. If Adobe fails to secure one the better ones, and Microsoft or any other semi-capable mega titan scoops up the competition, Adobe is the directly at risk of it's position eroding and ultimately systematically getting crushed in the seas of the open market.
All because Adobe continually chooses to rely on an easy $7-8 billion in ARR from CreativeCloud, rather than wise up and realize they need to evolve their strategy to better align with reality.
I know people at Adobe and have worked with several who are actually very good, so I'm a little perplexed. From the outside, it's hard to understand why the organization is so dysfunctional. Is upper management stuck in 90's style thinking? I wish I could be a fly on the wall at some of these meetings (probably they are mostly super boring, so only the [likely ongoing] pivotal moments where they fail to explore better paths forward, please ;)
I think Adobe's primary market focus is people who need it for their work. Assume that you're paying a creative person $60-80k+ per year, before benefits; how is $500/yr for their most important tool not a no-brainer?
There's a long term risk of another company building market-share with younger or poorer designers, but that's small, especially with how light-touch they seem to be with piracy. (Torrents of the Adobe suite are trivial to find, and have been online for years without disruption.)
Yes, and that's what makes Figma dangerous to Adobe. Adobe can justify their prices vs. any direct competitor with "professional designers need the good stuff." So Krita, Gimp, Canva will always come up short. But Figma is helping companies change how designers work to something Adobe isn't as good at. Figma or direct analogues to Figma are the good stuff, not Adobe, in those teams.
Clip Studio Paint and Krista seem like notable competitors for digital drawing or illustration. Adobe Animate doesn't appear to have Flash's popularity and Clip Studio Paint seems to be the most common choice for a young person keen on animation.
> In another year or other relatively short amount of time, Adobe will need to keep executing and succeeding in acquisitions of freemium competitors who can spring up with weed-like ease.
Figma took 10 years to get to this point. Even if someone else can get there in 5 years, as an executive at Adobe, do you care?
And the danger to Adobe wasn't Figma in its current state, it was Figma taking its performant web stack and starting to attack features in Photoshop.
This is the kind of deal which encapsulates perfectly what is wrong with the state of modern capitalism. This deal should be blocked by the FTC and Adobe should be forced to deal with a plucky, upstart competitor who could displace them.
Future freemium competition springing up isn't solved by this one remarkably expensive deal (which suggests Adobe is desperate, and a whole other topic). In another year or other relatively short amount of time, Adobe will need to keep executing and succeeding in acquisitions of freemium competitors who can spring up with weed-like ease. If Adobe fails to secure one the better ones, and Microsoft or any other semi-capable mega titan scoops up the competition, Adobe is the directly at risk of it's position eroding and ultimately systematically getting crushed in the seas of the open market.
All because Adobe continually chooses to rely on an easy $7-8 billion in ARR from CreativeCloud, rather than wise up and realize they need to evolve their strategy to better align with reality.
I know people at Adobe and have worked with several who are actually very good, so I'm a little perplexed. From the outside, it's hard to understand why the organization is so dysfunctional. Is upper management stuck in 90's style thinking? I wish I could be a fly on the wall at some of these meetings (probably they are mostly super boring, so only the [likely ongoing] pivotal moments where they fail to explore better paths forward, please ;)